Fifteen years ago, Florida State oceanography professor Jeff Chanton was so alarmed by polar ice core evidence that showed with sobering clarity the planet-alerting impact of skyrocketing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, he paid to insert the findings in the New Leaf Market co-op's newsletter.

"I was really so naive," Chanton said last week. "I thought, 'When people see this it's going to all change.'"

The reach of the New Leaf News wasn't what he'd hoped. Nor was that of the talks he gave around town for years afterward at the Miccosukee Land Cooperative, churches and other small community groups. Seeing no meaningful change in behaviors and policies, he became discouraged.

"For a while, I gave up," he said. "You can push on things for so long and you feel like you are wasting your time."

But over the last several weeks, Chanton's spirit has been renewed. On Tuesday afternoon, the pony-tailed professor was sitting on the divan in the Capitol office of Gov. Rick Scott along with four of his professional colleagues, surrounded by a throng of reporters from around the state, to discuss climate change and its impact on Florida.

After Scott burned minutes of their precious time with introductory pleasantries, Chanton had his turn. He sat on the edge of his seat, right next to the governor. He leaned in, as he would with any student, explaining a graphic that showed how the earth's epoch-long pattern of heating and cooling has been dramatically alerted by human activities in the last 200 years, since the industrial revolution.

"That's a seriously different world. It hasn't been like this for 800,000 years," he told Scott in a soft, but earnest and encouraging voice, emphasizing that how left unchecked, the carbon in the atmosphere will reach proportions with unfathomable consequences. "And that's really what worries me."

FSU's Jeff Chanton talks about why it's important scientists like him educate others - including Gov. Rick Scott last week - about the impact of climate change on Florida.

Getting traction

Chanton's efforts to educate the public and policymakers about the dangers of climate change have come a long way since those New Leaf News days. Before his meeting with Scott, he gave a 30-minute solo presentation last month to the Republican's likely Democratic gubernatorial challenger, Charlie Crist, at Tallahassee's Press Center. Crist called Chanton — he still has the voicemail message saved — after the professor delivered to Scott's office a letter signed by 10 university scientists seeking an audience to illuminate him about the issue.

On the campaign trail this year, Scott, who has disputed the correlation between human activity and global warming, repeatedly sidestepped questions about how he would respond to climate change, which already is impacting the state, by saying, "I'm not a scientist."

Since the letter was delivered, Chanton has found himself in the center of a media scrum that has given the issue the kind of high-profile attention he's long sought.

"Finally, we are getting some traction," he said hours before his meeting with Scott. "I don't expect it is going to turn around over night, but at least the wheels are gaining some traction. For so many years it's been something that can't be talked about and now, finally, it is being talked about."

After the meeting — which elicited no reaction whatsoever from Scott — Chanton went out for a couple of beers with his wife, environmental writer Susan Cerulean, and Susan Glickman, Florida director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, who brought the scientists together.

Despite Scott's silence (Crist, on the other hand called himself a climate change "believer"), Glickman said Chanton wasn't discouraged. Such scientists rarely get the chance to address powerful policymakers who can effect change. Glickman, who got to know Chanton in 2007 when both were involved in the fight against rebuffed plans by Tallahassee to buy into a coal-burning power plant in Perry, said Chanton was elated — giddy even.

"He so valued the attention to the issue. You can tell he feels so privileged to have the opportunity to present this important information," Glickman said. "There is zero ego in this. It is absolutely not about politics to him. He has a genuine sense of the moral obligation that we have to future generations to protect the vulnerable planet that we have."

Communication is key

David Hastings, a marine science and chemistry professor at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, is one of 10 scientists who signed the letter and was among the group who spoke to Scott. He said when he and Chanton started in the field 30 years ago, researchers and professors like them were content to work quietly in their labs, write grant proposals to further their work, interact with their graduate students and teach classes.

"That's not good enough anymore," Hastings said, in an interview with the Democrat last week. "There has been a sea change in terms of scientists recognizing our responsibility to communicate. We can't just talk to ourselves anymore, we need to reach out, we need to talk in a language that is accessible and we need to communicate the policy implications of the very serious science."

For Chanton, the role of science communicator is as comfortable as the well-worn dark plaid shirt he wore under his obligatory blue sport coat for the audience with Scott. Born in New Orleans and raised in Biloxi, Miss., Chanton graduated from New College of Florida in 1975. He went on to earn his master's and doctoral degrees in marine sciences at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, before joining the faculty at FSU in January 1989, where he has taught ever since.

A distinguished research professor, Chanton has authored more than 215 peer reviewed publications, graduated 16 doctoral and 34 master's students and served as director of FSU's Aquatic Environmental Science master's program and the Environmental Science undergraduate program. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, Waste Management and the Gulf of Mexico Research Consortium.

His roots in Florida are deep. His father grew up in Miami Beach on Lincoln Boulevard — now South Beach —where the art deco apartment building his grandmother owned still stands amid the rising tides. His work, primarily focused on the greenhouse gas methane, has taken him to the far northern reaches of Sweden and to the remotest parts of the Gulf of Mexico. While gentle and soft-spoken, his decades of educating thousands of students in vast lecture halls and intimate dissertation committees make him an authoritative voice in any setting.

"He is so passionate about this issue that you can feel it," said Glickman, who noted that other state university professors have been reluctant to get involved because of feared repercussions. "He is a natural born teacher."

After watching him talk to Scott, as cameras clicked and time was ticking, she added, "He might as well have been alone in the room."

For Chanton, speaking to Scott and Crist — and reaching those who read the articles about them — is essential. The young people in his classes — who hear the facts — get it, but their parents often don't.

"There is an urgency to communicate with older people now because we've learned enough to know how the world works that we need to change our behavior," he said. "Science is a way of learning about the world and if we learn about the world we can function better in it. We can have less pain in our lives."

A 'long overdue whirlwind'

Chanton's friend Tom Clark said he would not have guessed his tennis buddy would be grabbing headlines in the final stretch of a hotly contested governor's race, but he's not surprised.

"Jeff doesn't come across as strident. He is generally a reserved guy, but he knows his own mind," Clark said. "He is comfortable doing what he thinks needs to be done."

Longtime family friend and Leon County Commission Chairwoman Kristin Dozier said there is a need for people like Chanton to communicate the facts in a constructive way.

"Jeff may look like your standard researcher and academic, but he has a great skill translating these very complex ideas into a language us non-scientists can really digest and understand," Dozier said. "It's been really wonderful to see him branch out this way."

Chanton's wife, Cerulean, has supported him every step of the way, keeping track of every turn of events and sharing the dozens of news articles on Facebook. The couple, longtime residents of Indianhead Acres, shares three grown children and a deep love of wild places. They collaborated on her new book, to be published in the spring, about the history and environmental changes of the Big Bend's barrier islands, "Coming to Pass: Florida's Coastal Islands in a Gulf of Change." Between Chanton's presentation to Crist and the meeting with Scott, the two carried on with a planned backpacking trip out west.

Cerulean called all the attention to Chanton and the issue of climate change a "long overdue whirlwind."

"He's been teaching this stuff for so long, for decades," she said. "It's just great to have it out there. It has a taken a long time to bring everyone along."

As for Chanton, he isn't much concerned about who wins the race in November.

"I would just like the governor to believe there is a problem," he said, "and start to address it."